[TheForge] PC-ness Grammatical Pet Peeve Rant - Way OT

[David E. Smucker]

Hey Bruce blame it on the Victorians -- after all they gave us "white meat" 
because they couldn't say chicken "breast".  Now we can't say white meat / 
dark meat because it isn't PC.  I always like the way the Germans had logic 
to the gender of their nouns.  Keyhole is female, Key is male.  Keep this in 
mind when blacksmithing.

Dave
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Bruce Freeman" <freemab222 at yahoo.com>
To: "theforge" <theforge at mailman.qth.net>
Sent: Tuesday, May 29, 2007 12:52 PM
Subject: [TheForge] PC-ness Grammatical Pet Peeve Rant - Way OT


> You guys surely don't deserve this rant, but I gotta
> vent somewhere!
>
> (Climbing onto my soapbox, preparing to be pedantic.)
>
> "Gender" is NOT a synonym for "sex."  (And "sex" is a
> noun, not a verb, that refers to a biological
> attribute, not to coitus.)  I am of the male sex.  I
> don't HAVE a gender.
>
> Pronouns and possessive adjectives have gender.  In
> many foreign languages the nouns have genders too.
> But people and animals do not have genders.
>
> With all the overt sexuality in this society, why did
> "gender" ever get plucked out of the dictionary as a
> euphamism for the word "sex" that even the Victorians
> freely used?
>
> I suspect it was a seconday error from the "he/she"
> fiasco.  "He/she" is not a grammatical construction
> and is totally unnecessary.  The proper pronoun is
> "he," NOT because we don't respect women, but because
> "he" includes women.  Why?  Because "he" is MASCULINE,
> not MALE.
>
> Masculine, in this sense, is a grammatical attribute,
> and has nothing to do with sex.  Anglophones may not
> appreciate that because "he" and "she" are so closely
> associated with the male and female sexes in English.
>
>
> That's NOT TRUE in other languages.  "Madchen,"
> (literally, "little maid" in German) is NEUTER, but do
> a google image search on the word and you'll agree
> there's nothing neuter about the photos that come up.
> But neuter is also a grammatical concept.  It has
> nothing to do with sex.
>
> Therefore, it's perfectly proper to speak of one of us
> as "he," without disrepecting the ladies on theforge.
> Properly, a baby or an animal is "it," not "he" or
> "she."  (That may be a stretch for new parents, but
> for diners in a restaurant where IT is screaming - -
> no stretch at all!)
>
> (Climbing down from my soapbox.)
>
> I don't know what set me off this morning.  One too
> many "he/she"'s, one too many forms asking my "gender"
> I guess!
>
> Bruce
> NJ
>
>
>
>
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